


Saudade

by writernotwaiting



Series: Tales from Denialand [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Frigga does not actually appear, Gen, Post-Thor: The Dark World, have a healthy serving of angst, it builds character, just her stuff, the main character is Loki's feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-29 00:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20073154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writernotwaiting/pseuds/writernotwaiting
Summary: Loki has not yet had the courage to visit his mother's old rooms. Tonight he wraps himself in shadow and sneaks past the warded doors.





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> This short fic is another vignette connected to parts one and two. It's action follows soon after Midnight Conversations.

**Saudade**—a nostalgic yearning to be near again to someone or something that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; “the love that remains.”

At seven months, Loki’s disguise and Eir’s wisdom have bought him enough healing that he can take a full breath without pain. Her confidentiality, thank the fates below, remains unbroken, though she has threatened him with sleeping draughts.

Loki has still not found Odin’s secret stash of documents.

He still has not had the courage to visit his mother’s empty rooms.

Odin had them sealed tight after the funeral, and Loki has seen no reason to countermand that order.

It wasn’t denial.

It was not.

But he could not resist their pull forever, and tonight, as he sits drenched in sweat after drowning in yet another ocean of night terrors, he wraps himself in shadow and slips past the warded doors.

It is all precisely as he remembered.

In the sitting room, Frigga’s heavy loom sits up against a large window, a half finished tapestry still strung, slowly being completed by cobwebs. Scattered about the room sit unfinished projects resting on chairs meant for her ladies, their handiwork recognizable even now, even this many years after he shunned clinging to their skirts—Gudren’s fine needlework, Sigyn’s intricate lacework, Anna’s card weaving—all left as they must have been the day Maliketh drove them home to draw knives and protect their children, leaving Frigga to protect Jane on her own.

While Loki stewed below in his own bile, useless.

With slow care, Loki picks his way over to the loom, sits in the chair as if he might feel some residual warmth even after so many months. There has been no time to grieve, or savor the vengeance exacted on her murderers, even as the physical reminder ached still in his chest. He picked up the shuttle, rubbed his thumb across its smooth wood, closed his eyes and remembered how it flew threw the threads chased by the occasional glimmer of Frigga’s seider. The unfinished work on the loom appears to have been only half done, yet it still sings with quiet energy—knotwork to enhance calm, to aid sleep, to protect . . .

Loki stands abruptly and moves to the bedchamber, reluctant even to disturb the dust. Here was Frigga’s inner sanctum, where Loki once ran as a gangly child, hiding his hurts when his brother had chased him away from his games—too small, too young, not boyish enough. A little low shelf still housed a stack of storybooks, falling apart with use, along with a couple of elementary spellbooks and useless trinkets.

Idly, he opens and closes drawers, not really looking for anything, just looking. In the nightstand, though, a little notebook catches his eye. A journal. Careful notes for every day, dated precisely, written in Frigga’s careful script.

He is excited now. Every day. Frigga’s eye was keen, her observations sharp, and her insight now would be invaluable—which counselors might have a modicum of sense? Which courtiers are to be trusted? Who should be cultivated to share the best gossip? He wonders how far back her notes go and where the older volumes are stashed. Might they go so far back as the last war? What might she have to say about a certain war prize Odin brought back from that icy realm?

He begins to look with purpose, eye out for hidden cubbyholes. This is a game he mastered long ago, and still practices often—creating and finding secret places. He stays at it for a careful hour at least, until—ah! at last! There it is, at the back of her closet, a second closet—of course. The seams of the door are nearly invisible, and the wards are strong, but Loki is nothing if not his mother’s protege. A flick of the wrist, a soft caress at the right spot, and he’s rewarded with the soft snick as the latches give way and the door opens, almost as if he was meant to find it. He steps in, raises a mage light, and . . .

It’s not a closet.

It is an entire library. An archive tucked into a not-space between places, and it is packed, floor-to-ceiling with tomes and manuscripts and scrolls and items that radiate power. Just for a moment he grins maniacally with joy—so much to explore!

But then a second realization pours its heavy sand into his chest, and his heart breaks just a little bit more—and how is that even possible after the past few years—to have anything left inside still to be broken? Here are all those tomes that should be in the library, all the histories of Odin’s early reign, Bor’s long wars—who knows what else? And yes, he is thrilled, because here, probably, are all the resources he had been lacking, and yes, he can probably merge his mother’s clever not-space with his own.

But it also means that Frigga herself was the keeper of Odin’s secrets.

So many secrets. So many half truths and missing pieces.

Loki keeps learning—just as he becomes used to the taste of bitterness—that lies come in an infinite range of flavors; there are always new dishes to be served.


End file.
